The scum of all fears
An intriguing notion is making news regarding ex-NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani and his '08 presidential bid. Not only is he getting burned by a major firefighters union rebutting years of post-9/11 hero lore with reports from the ground, but Sept. 11 first-responder families are apparently rather eager to climb aboard the next "Swift Boat," arguing Giuliani's disaster preparedness policies as mayor basically doomed their loved ones.
While Salon's supposition that Democrats might actually get the chance to fire the torpedoes before the GOP primary bombardment exhausts the ammo is adorably quaint, the mere capability raises a whole other issue.
Such criticisms are compelling and perfectly legitimate, especially for a candidate running (explicitly or not) on his 9/11 record, but are they productive?
After all, none of us thinks or reacts too rationally when it comes to 9/11. Remember when 90 percent of us registered approval of President Bush's handling of the crisis -- which, because it didn't entail (publicized) sniveling in his bunker or a massive civil liberties-grab, we judged just peachy? Six years, two wars and one election later, Bush's numbers are well below freezing, to the point that he's finding a sufficiently warm reception among the burning-Bush-with-Hitler-mustache effigies in Latin America to make a week-long, lame-duck vacation out of it.
9/11 illustrates one of the many catch-22s of politics: When our passions get peaked, we pay attention and engage, but we do so on necessarily distorted perceptions. It's no coincidence the Bush administration is rolling out the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Gitmo "confession" story just as the U.S. attorney scandal and the Iraq debate -- maybe, finally? -- are heating up.
Which is why I can't help but daydream about what could happen if we were somehow able to purge all referents to 9/11 from the political discourse like so many no-longer-expedient prosecutors.
The fears stirred up by 9/11 can compel otherwise competent professionals to produce ridiculous, fallacious swill like this under the guise of journalism. How could our democracy NOT be better off without between-the-lines insinuations that because Barack Obama was exposed to Muslim doctrine as a child, he's somehow unfit to lead the country?
If any of this were about logic and serious concern over leadership competency, we'd be automatically disqualifying, questioning or we-report-you-deciding all the practicing Catholic candidates on the spectre of child molestation, or the Mormon candidate on polygamy, and on and on ad nauseum.
But this Obama-Muslim business is all about emotions and fear, not rational judgment, and the scary thing is it works, because it operates on an independent and unnervingly powerful level. It works the same way stereotypes do -- one doesn't have to believe them, one simply has to know their content for them to have their effect. So of course Obama's camp is going to react "defensively," it's patently obvious what such reportage serves to stir up.
I held my virtual tongue during that "madrasa" non-story inaccurately claiming Obama attended a radical Islamist school(/veritable terrorist training mill) as a kid because I thought maybe, just maybe, it was an isolated and malicious anomaly, not a sign of mainstream "arguments" to come.
But this just needs to stop. If receiving two hours of religious education a week for two years as a child under the age of 10 and playing with other kids at a mosque makes one a Muslim (and, in Obama's case, therefore also a liar), then I'm not really a "non-theist" at all but apparently just a few vows and a habit short of full-fledged Catholic nunnery.
Aren't there more tangible, sensical matters to be reported on? You know, like tracking down those "bugs" that supposedly ate Obama's school records and vetting them for ties to Al Qaeda or the Democratic Party or rich, gay, Hollywood liberals? Such shoddy journalism, it's a disgrace.
While Salon's supposition that Democrats might actually get the chance to fire the torpedoes before the GOP primary bombardment exhausts the ammo is adorably quaint, the mere capability raises a whole other issue.
Such criticisms are compelling and perfectly legitimate, especially for a candidate running (explicitly or not) on his 9/11 record, but are they productive?
After all, none of us thinks or reacts too rationally when it comes to 9/11. Remember when 90 percent of us registered approval of President Bush's handling of the crisis -- which, because it didn't entail (publicized) sniveling in his bunker or a massive civil liberties-grab, we judged just peachy? Six years, two wars and one election later, Bush's numbers are well below freezing, to the point that he's finding a sufficiently warm reception among the burning-Bush-with-Hitler-mustache effigies in Latin America to make a week-long, lame-duck vacation out of it.
9/11 illustrates one of the many catch-22s of politics: When our passions get peaked, we pay attention and engage, but we do so on necessarily distorted perceptions. It's no coincidence the Bush administration is rolling out the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Gitmo "confession" story just as the U.S. attorney scandal and the Iraq debate -- maybe, finally? -- are heating up.
Which is why I can't help but daydream about what could happen if we were somehow able to purge all referents to 9/11 from the political discourse like so many no-longer-expedient prosecutors.
The fears stirred up by 9/11 can compel otherwise competent professionals to produce ridiculous, fallacious swill like this under the guise of journalism. How could our democracy NOT be better off without between-the-lines insinuations that because Barack Obama was exposed to Muslim doctrine as a child, he's somehow unfit to lead the country?
If any of this were about logic and serious concern over leadership competency, we'd be automatically disqualifying, questioning or we-report-you-deciding all the practicing Catholic candidates on the spectre of child molestation, or the Mormon candidate on polygamy, and on and on ad nauseum.
But this Obama-Muslim business is all about emotions and fear, not rational judgment, and the scary thing is it works, because it operates on an independent and unnervingly powerful level. It works the same way stereotypes do -- one doesn't have to believe them, one simply has to know their content for them to have their effect. So of course Obama's camp is going to react "defensively," it's patently obvious what such reportage serves to stir up.
I held my virtual tongue during that "madrasa" non-story inaccurately claiming Obama attended a radical Islamist school(/veritable terrorist training mill) as a kid because I thought maybe, just maybe, it was an isolated and malicious anomaly, not a sign of mainstream "arguments" to come.
But this just needs to stop. If receiving two hours of religious education a week for two years as a child under the age of 10 and playing with other kids at a mosque makes one a Muslim (and, in Obama's case, therefore also a liar), then I'm not really a "non-theist" at all but apparently just a few vows and a habit short of full-fledged Catholic nunnery.
Aren't there more tangible, sensical matters to be reported on? You know, like tracking down those "bugs" that supposedly ate Obama's school records and vetting them for ties to Al Qaeda or the Democratic Party or rich, gay, Hollywood liberals? Such shoddy journalism, it's a disgrace.
posted by Holly at 12:49 AM
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